BEYOND THE HEALTHCARE PARADIGM: CO-CREATING A NEW MODEL FOR COLLABORATIVE TRANSDISCIPLINARY HEALTHCARE DESIGN EDUCATION

Abstract

Although healthcare has long been a focus for design research activity dating from the 1960’s and Bruce Archer’s Industrial Design (Engineering) research unit, globally there remain very few specialist programmes in this field and even fewer that go beyond classic user driven design models. This paper reports on a unique collaboration between the [Removed for Review] Design School and [Removed for Review] to develop an innovative global postgraduate programme structure between two diverse collaborating institutions offering an MRes and MSc qualification. The [Removed for Review] and [Removed for Review] have a 40-year history of developing innovative design led education including the well-known Innovation Design Engineering (1980) and Global Innovation Design (2015) MA/MSc programmes. This new pair of programmes emerged from the [Removed for Review] centre initiative that set out to create the first lean innovation design consultancy based inside a hospital at St. Mary’s in London. Both long term wicked problems and current challenges from the national level NHS and global healthcare sectors in combination with new disruptive technologies require an innovative approach to healthcare design education. The need for sophisticated design led innovation skills, flexible learning, rapid technology competence, and entrepreneurial project management require a new approach that moves beyond ‘classic’ design approaches and instead sees healthcare design as a context landscape where fluid and flexible methods can transcend disciplinary limits. This led to the creation of a programme curriculum including research, business, leadership, innovation, behaviour change, ‘Helix design dash’, and deep dive advanced design and innovation methods introduced alongside a two-year major healthcare design project. Moreover, the partnership demonstrates how novel design and medical research methods have been used for practice based healthcare design projects across a wide group of disciplines beyond healthcare professionals and designers. We reflect on the diverse skillsets and approaches that have evolved through collaborative teamwork between healthcare practitioners, designers and diverse disciplinary backgrounds and conclude that these context driven programmes may be showing evidence of a new ‘post-disciplinary’ mindset and explore implications for education, research and practice for the future of healthcare design.